Institutions and Audiences
In this part of the media studies course you will to learn how the film industry operates and explore how audiences are formed and use media.
The first two keywords you need to learn definitions for are – unsurprisingly – institution & audience.
Audience - Collective group of people reading any media text.
Institution – An established organization or company, e.g. the BBC, that provides media content, whether for profit, public service or another motive. This involves you understanding of the media as a business, the relationship between institutions and the public and media as a form of power.
Q - Think about the number of ways you can ‘read’ something produced by the BBC?
TASK - Go to the Doctor Who website.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/s4/
Q. How can the audience engage with Doctor Who? How many different forms of ‘media’ are offered?
Although this is a TV programme produced by a British company it involves video games, cartoons, film style trailers, cartoons, comics, music etc…
The name we give to this coming together of different ‘media’ is your third keyword:
Convergence - Hardware and software coming together across media, and companies coming together across similar boundaries. This makes the distinction between different types of media and different media industries increasingly dubious.
Q. How would you usually watch an episode of Doctor Who?
Now think of the other ways you can watch an episode. Here’s one…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOx5VlPQgY0
What links these formats?
They’re all digital, your fourth keyword...
Digital technology has led to increasing uncertainty over how we define an audience, with general agreement that the notion of a large group of people, brought together by time, responding to a single text, is outdated and that audiences now are ‘fragmented’.
Key Points
In media studies we focus on ‘the contemporary’.
What does this mean if, for example, we are to study the film industry in Britain?
We are also keen to focus on convergence as a key agent of change. Why?
Because it’s one of the most important things that’s happening now. How does the film industry 'converge' with the internet?
We are finally interested in how things are changing.
Within the context of not only convergence, but also ownership, technologies and globalisation.
More key words – ownership and technologies are pretty straightforward however…
Globalisation means - The shift in media distribution from local or national to international and the whole world at once. Culturally, describes the process of ‘sameness’ over the world, typified by the availability of McDonalds in most nations.
HOMEWORK FOR TOMORROW!
Careers in the Media
To understand the workings of media institutions we need to get an understanding of the changing nature of employment and careers in the various media industries.
Skillset is the industry body which ‘supports skills and training for people and businesses to ensure the UK creative media industries maintain their world class position.’
Open up the 2006 Skillset Employment Census and go to pages 4 & 5 - PART ONE EXECUTIVE SUMMARY.
http://www.skillset.org/research/article_5136_1.asp
TASK – answer these questions…
What’s happened with employment on terrestrial TV? What does this suggest about the traditional TV industry?
What’s happening in the interactive media sector?
Where is the industry predominantly based?
What’s the proportion of women working in the media? Where do most women work?
In Skillset’s ‘Survey of the Audio Visual Industries' Workforce 2005’ it revealed that since 1990, more women have entered the industry than men, and more black or ethnic minorities have entered the industry than whites.
In a similar survey from 2003 it revealed that just under two-thirds of people working in the media are under 35, two-thirds of all people working in the media have a degree and a quarter of those have a degree in media. Only 46% of those working in the media earn over £30,000 a year.
What does this suggest about the media industry?
What does it suggest about media representation?
Don't forget to update your media diary.
